From the Studs to the Sub-Floors

From the studs to the sub-floors,

A transformation is taking place.

An excavation,

A stripping away,

A peeling of the onion layers,

We’re scraping down to the core.

A bearing of souls,

Of commitments made,

Promises kept.

Even with a disruption or two,

Our intuition knows the way.

To get to a place of home reconstruction,

Is to first demolish,

To pull back and tear away.

To get to a place of healing,

Is to first face the shadows,

To pull back and tear away,

From everything known.

To see the outer transformation,

Is to first undergo the inner transformation.

To live with unhealed and unknown trauma,

Is like living with rotten floors and bad pipes.

At first you think you are                                                          

Changing one thing,

Healing one thing.

And before you know it,

A whole other wound,

A whole other water problem,

Has opened up.

There’s no way to move forward,

Without addressing it.

It has to be done,

It has to be burned.

The wall needs to be opened up,

The wound needs to be cut open,

Before the rupture,

Is repaired.

Repair.

Repairing my world,

Before I can repair the world.

The world I dreamed of as a girl,

Where everyone could be free.

Whatever freedom meant to them,

It wasn’t for me to judge.

The only judgement I cast

Was on myself.

Harsh at times. Critical, mean self-talk.

Until I learned that every

Nasty thing

My mother ever said to me,

Was really how she felt about herself.

It’s sad the wounds we carry,

From generation to generation.

But nobody ever likes airing,

Their dirty laundry.

With commitment to the path,

Integrity to the soul,

And peace in my heart,

I journey onward.

To accept that I am a survivor of a childhood sexual assault,

To understand that I am brave by talking about it,

To recognize how wrong it was, that none – not one – of my three parental units,

As I liked to call them,

Helped me.

They instead taught me to stay silent,

To bear the burden alone.

But I am not alone,

There are others like me,

And there are others like you,

And even if no one can relate to your story,

Your experience,

There are people who care enough to listen.

To show you that good people

Do exist in this world.

That it is possible to heal,

From our wounds.

It is possible to dismantle and destroy,

The old dysfunctional systems and toxic relationships,

And to build back a life that is better and more authentic

Than before.

I am not stronger because of my trauma,

I am stronger because I kept putting

One foot in front of the other.

Each and every day.

Just like the generations of ancestors

In my lineage.

The ancestors,

Who walk before me,

The ancestors,

Who walk behind me,

And the ancestors

Who walk beside me.

I am strong because of them,

They’ve given me their gifts.

Because it was my purpose,

To heal the family lines.

Sometimes we must dig deep,

Sometimes we must lose in order to gain,

Sometimes we have to break open,

And sometimes, we need a break from it all.

Because transformation is not easy.

Wounding?

That’s the easy part.

Putting a hole in a wall?

Simple.

But healing the innermost parts?

That’s the hardest part of all.

In both, a human body,

And a constructed home.

From the studs to the sub-floors,

A transformation has taken place.

New walls where once there weren’t any,

Boundaries developed for the journey to peace.

Yes, I’ll admit. I want the whole damn loaf,

Because I’m not settling for breadcrumbs anymore.